Flamyngo unveils their take on the social-travel app

While some entrepreneurs get it right and get a business off the ground on the first try, not everyone is so fortune. Maarten Graven may not have found success with CityShare, his first attempt at building a startup, but now he is back to take another crack at building entrepreneurship with Flamyngo, with a “social-travel” platform.

Flamyngo, which is currently only available on iOS, is targeting both bloggers, offering a tool that allows them to create a list of inspiring places and share it with users with just a few lines of code, and with travelers, offering an app that allows them to ask friends for travel tips. Essentially, if you are planning a trip to New York, for example, you can ask your contacts for advice on cool places to visit or must-try restaurants. Then, the suggestions are automatically matched with information, such as working owns, address, website, etc. and a list is made available in an inbox. And, what is nice, from the perspective of the contacts, is that they do not even need to sign-up for Flamyngo in order to offer tips. Going forward, the startup intends to allow users to book a table at a restaurant or hotel, as well.

The startup tells me that their business-model includes a revenue-sharing plan with booking sites, such as those dealing with restaurants, hotels, and tickets. And they also intend to work with corporate partners, who will provide curated travel-guides.

Flamyngo has just gone live, so it is a bit early to talk about user figures. However, they tell me that they had about 1,000 users during the trial phase and that they achieved about 50,000 impressions monthly, across 50 travel blogs.

The startup has also picked up funding, to the tune of 200,000 Euro, from private angels. Going forward, they are planning to announce further integration, with the goal of becoming not only a discovery platform, but a destination provider.